Proenza Schouler / Resort 2013

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If you happened to be clicking regularly on Vogue.com during the fall 2012 shows this past February and March, and having stirrings of panic at the thought of clothes that invoke an unfettered exuberance, extravagance, embellishment, eccentricity, and other fashion-y words that begin with the letter e, then be calmed. Hope is here. Salvation is at hand. And it comes in the form of a T-shirt and jeans, courtesy of Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough and their Proenza Schouler resort collection. Of course, in their capable and coolly inventive hands, it’s not any old tee and not any old pair of five-pocket denims. Proenza Schouler elevated them, experimented with them: The shirt in a neoprene or bonded cotton, the jeans washed and faded, blue or gray, and cut with a skinny-slouchy line which suggested tailoring more than engineering. Then these might be worn with a relaxed, somewhat oversize, green tweed utility jacket or a coat blocked in neutral shades of tweed. Yet the whole look stayed effortless and easy, and rightfully so. (You see: Yet more e words.) Their sentiment was clear and direct: Realness is all.

“Clothes to wear, clothes to buy,” stated Hernandez of he and McCollough’s practical, no-fuss approach to the project of designing resort. “Uncomplicated shapes in great fabrics.” Indeed they were. As well as the aforementioned jeans and tees, there were fitted tweedy A-line dresses that zipped up the front, scuba-style; perfect super-slouchy trousers that puddled at the floor, worn with drapey leather tanks; and yet more denim in the form of faded jeans jackets (some sleeveless) to layer under things. They’re launching a new bag, too, the PS13, a utilitarian purse in various sizes that can be hand-carried or suspended from a chunky shoulder strap. It possesses the same kind of artful offhand way with luxury as they showed with those tees; one style comes in a bleached python that is then re-colored in Rorschach like patterns. In its lack of affectation, its desire to be straightforward, Proenza Schouler’s resort captured what’s becoming ever more desirable in fashion. Not just the joys of runway drama, but real clothes that women can look, and feel, really good in.